"i have the signature," kaldill sighed, looking at both lendill and norian. "it may take a day or two, at the least, but i will track him after that."

"good. we'll have people ready to go as soon as we get a lock on this. lissa will come, as will garde, reah, denevik and gavril. lendill and i will come as well," norian nodded his thanks to kaldill schaff.

"i do this for my child and his mate," kaldill nodded at lendill. "someday, perhaps my son will know of his worth to his race."

"thank you, father," lendill breathed a respectful sigh to his one remaining parent.

"i will send the information the moment i have it." kaldill schaff disappeared.

"this will work? how reliable is this?" norian turned to his oldest friend.

"you can bet everything you have on it," lendill replied.

"have you heard from tory?" gavin dropped his shirt on the bed. he'd always dressed well as a vampire-aurelius had instilled in him the necessity of looking his best at all times. the only times he'd dressed otherwise in the past were when he'd been undercover for the council and different dress was required.

"no, honey. and gavril and ry are pissed. they can't even get an answer from him. i don't understand this." lissa rubbed her forehead.

"i fail to understand it as well. reah will bear his children. he will not get any with that woman."

"gavin, i don't think she's mature enough to be called a woman. did you hear her chatter? i have no interest in who her neighbors are, or that their son drinks too much."

"i wanted to place another compulsion not to speak," gavin grumbled in complete agreement.

"garde told him under no circumstances could he reveal the thifilathi to her-it's just too dangerous. i can see darletta announcing that to the entire alliance. jayd will have a cow if that happens." lissa removed her earrings and set them on her dressing table.

"jayd is right to hide what kifirin truly is. just as ildevar wyyld hides his otherness from the alliance. some things are better kept hidden." gavin sat on the edge of the bed and removed his pants.

"yes. things might stay safer, that way."

"little mate, larentii can provide energy sex, along with more traditional methods," nefrigar smiled down at me. "the wise ones say that a high demon will be able to handle energy sex until the final two months before the birth."

"really?" i was learning many things from my larentii.

"really." his smile widened. "and as we will have energy sex this first time, i am inviting your two lion snake mates to experience it with us."

"huh?" now i was confused. farzi and nenzi sidled into the room-nefrigar had taken me to beliphar for what i thought to be coupling. farzi and nenzi were now with us.

"nefrigar say we have what we never have before, with him and our reah." nenzi looked so hopeful. i knew then just how much i loved both him and farzi. the other six i thought of as my brothers, but farzi and nenzi were more than that. i swallowed and nodded at both my lion snakes. nefrigar made sure we were all comfortable on the bed and then surrounded us with power. i didn't have to do anything, nefrigar guided me through the entire thing, pulling energy from himself and then from me, allowing it to mix before slamming it back into both of us. the result was a mind-bending climax that rocked the floor beneath the bed, the backwash hitting farzi and nenzi, who experienced the first-ever sexual encounter they'd had in their lives. when i woke from the brief faint after the pleasure, it was to find a smiling nefrigar, watching while two eager reptanoids stared at him and me, fully expecting us to repeat the performance.

"i informed amara that i will not consider this while she is still upset and in mourning." belen stared at griffin. amara had come to him only the day before, asking to be released from her long life. belen wisely had refused, recognizing the pain behind the request.

"tell me she will come back to me." griffin was begging the nameless one for hope. the moment wyatt died, griffin could no longer see into his own or amara's future.

"i will not peer into that future for you, oracle. had you or your father listened through the years, you would have experienced a different outcome. wyatt was meant to be a healer. would have been invited to join the saa thalarr quickly, had things turned out otherwise. kifirin gave a gift of prophecy to reah, his child. yet you and your father chose to punish her after her final gift to you. wyatt tried to heal the ra'ak there at the end-the creature was asking for help. but true to his brutal race, the ra'ak turned when wyatt lowered his shield, poisoning your child."

"i hope you didn't tell amara that when she came to you." griffin wiped tears away.

"i did not; she is suffering enough as it is. if she comes to me again in a turn, and asks for death again, i will not deny it."

"please, no," griffin moaned.

"bro, you can do more for me than you think." gavril sat at his desk, looking at rylend. "everything you touch turns to gold, and everybody you meet ends up eating from your hand, one way or the other. you can be prime minister or ambassador, your choice. neither dee nor i have much patience with some of our members. you can smooth the way for the campiaan alliance."

"and it will pay very well," dee added. he was standing beside gavril's desk.

"will i stay here or elsewhere?" ry asked, his dark eyes going from his brother to dormas, gavril's assistant.

"ry, stay wherever you like. if you don't like it here, we'll build something just for you. dee and i have plenty of experience in that."

"yeah. i'll find some plans and see if you can put something together for me on top of one of these mountains." ry sighed softly.

"you didn't have to renounce your citizenship."

"yes i did. i had something to say about the laws of karathia, and that was the best way i knew to say it. banishing somebody because of words spoken in private? that's ludicrous and you know it."

"i can't hear reah's thoughts anymore; nefrigar has blocked them to all except the larentii. did you know that?" gavril didn't sound happy.

"nobody ever taught her how to shield before, and that's probably our fault. tory should have shown her how, at the very least, but he just let things go on, and when he upset her when she was pregnant the first time, well, that all came out, didn't it? he knew better. and i'm inclined to agree with reah a little-he wasn't ready to be a father. now, with darletta fucking everything up, he still may not be good father material."

"i hope that's not the case."

"we will see that reah's children are cared for." gavril blinked at dee's words.

"darlie, this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to us," dantel schuul offered darletta a drink inside his private office. darletta's new husband was moping out by the overly large pool at the back of dantel's obscenely huge estate. "his mother is the queen of le-ath veronis, his father is prime minister on kifirin, his great-grandfather is king of karathia and if my sources are correct, his brother is the founding member of the campiaan alliance. nobody could ask for better connections than that. we'll get everything we can before we start putting the pressure on." dantel gloated while his daughter smiled and sipped her drink.

"my father says he's gotten a lock twice, but they moved again before he could even send mindspeech," lendill paced in front of me. we were sitting in aurelius' spacious home on the light half of le-ath veronis. lendill had spent the night with me. he was treating me so carefully since he'd learned i was pregnant. in the two weeks since wyatt's funeral, i hadn't heard one word from tory. neither had his parents. he'd made a choice, and it was to ignore his daughters and his family.

"not surprising, since willem said that one of the ra'ak could read the winds." i'd done some research on what willem could do, in the form of asking lissa for information, along with cheedas, the former cook-turned-vampire. both knew a lot.

"so, that one is predicting our moves." lendill raked fingers through his hair in a frustrated gesture.

"it only makes sense-they've been ahead of us by a step or two, right down the line. i was hoping that their illness would have affected this somehow, but something is keeping them in line." i was as frustrated as lendill was over this. at least they were taking males now-zellar's way of covering his bets, i think. sex was no longer the objective-getting away from his captors was.

"yeah, ever since that one attacked your bus on tulgalan, they've reined in the insanity."

"wait a minute," i said. "nefrigar!" i shouted.

"my love?" he was there in an instant.

"you picked up a piece of that ra'ak, didn't you-the one i killed on tulgalan?"

"this piece?" he held the chunk out to me. it was bigger than my fist.

"may i borrow this?" i asked.

"you may have it, i have three more." he was smiling widely at me.

"lendill, can your dad zone in on this sort of abnormality?" i handed the chunk over. "there's only four more now with this sort of illness, and they should all be together."

"might be possible-would you like to see where my father lives?" lendill was smiling too. that's how lendill, nefrigar and i all ended up in the elven kingdom, somewhere a high demon had never been before.

"this is fascinating," kaldill schaff took the chunk of ra'ak dust from lendill. "i'm not sure i've ever held such as this." we'd been transported to the hidden elven lands on wyyld, and stood inside kaldill's beautiful, private study.

"you may keep it, elf king," nefrigar smiled as kaldill handled the chunk of ra'ak dust. "reah may have one of the other pieces if she wants."

"i don't need it, honey blue," i smiled up at him.